In a brilliant essay over at Tablet, Alana Newhouse prepares a massive bowl of dystopian catnip for pessimistic conservatives called, Everything Is Broken. For my money, it's one of the most profound things I've read in years. In it, she describes the "flatness" that now dominates our society.
Flatness is the reason the three jobs with the most projected growth in your country all earn less than $27,000 a year, and it is also the reason that all the secondary institutions that once gave structure and meaning to hundreds of millions of American lives—jobs and unions but also local newspapers, churches, Rotary Clubs, main streets—have been decimated. And flatness is the mechanism by which, over the past decade and with increasing velocity over the last three years, a single ideologically driven cohort captured the entire interlocking infrastructure of American cultural and intellectual life. It is how the Long March went from a punchline to reality, as one institution after another fell and then entire sectors, like journalism, succumbed to control by narrow bands of sneering elitists who arrogated to themselves the license to judge and control the lives of their perceived inferiors.
She goes on to describe the sameness of American cities, particularly the wealthy areas, dominated by tech workers. Coffee shops and craft brewpubs with WiFi, boutique eateries and so forth. Think San Diego's Gaslamp District.
I don't know that such things are all that new, but the enforced cultural homogeneity certainly is. Back in the day, UCSD was utterly dominated by progressives, but ideological enforcement was limited to the odd gasps in the social science classrooms when you said you were thinking of voting for a Republican. Now, asserting that women can't become men would get you hauled up in irons before a committee. At least it would where I work, which is substantially less crazed than UCSD. Such extrapolation is defensible, methinks.
It's the description of this mandated intellectual flatness that opened my eyes to Alana's genius. Flatness. What a great word! For odd-shaped fellows like, me, it's the demand that I conform that presses my rebel buttons. Wife kitteh has asked me several times why I don't put up pictures of great Union generals instead of Lee and Jackson and I think this is the reason. I feel like a rebel in this culture. I identify more naturally to "All we ask is to be let alone."
I also identify with being hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned, but continuing to fight anyway.
There's not much room for people like me any more. At least not in polite society. Alana's essay describes and codifies the feelings I have in my subconscious when I have to suppress myself at work and in public. I can recall the cheerful eccentrics and oddballs I knew when I was a pup, but I don't see too many of them any more, unless we first exchange a few cryptic, identifying sentences to indicate we're rebels.
There's a lot more to the essay. It's rather long and there are parts that describe expected consequences of a global economy instead of intentional suppressions of freedom, but in the main, it's genius.
Enjoy.
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| Last night's rack of pork. It was not flat. |
10 comments:
Now you've been and gone and made me feel hungry!
Yes I read that article, it's so sad that the lunatics have been allowed to take power. It seems like Trump was the last chance, who else would or could take on the entrenched deep state. It wasn't just the Dems that did whatever it took, the Rinos, the Courts, the FBI and CIA, they're all in on it. However I'm still optimistic, they can do it and keep it up for a while but with increasing difficulty and then another Trump will arrive on the scene when the time is ripe and the country will be full to the brim with pissed off people. It will take more than a rigged election and a bunch of traitors and lunatics to beat them. Hope I live long enough to see it!
I think the thing about the "flatness", is that it is a mistake to think that it was caused intentionally. I think, instead, it is a direct result of the fact that long-distance communication is so cheap as to be practically free; that it is easier to fly across the country or even to another continent than to drive the length of Michigan[1]; and that containerized shipping has made transporting goods across the world competitive with trucking it across town.
We aren't going to be able to go back and "unflatten" the world. We're going to need to adapt to what we have. If you don't like the way that other people are adapting to the flattening, the solution is not to try to revert back, because that is Not Going To Happen (at least, not without the complete collapse of civilization). Instead, you are going to have to look at how to use the "flatness' to achieve the things that you feel are important.
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[1] It takes me 10 hours to drive from Houghton to the Ohio border near Toledo. In comparison, when my wife flew to England a few years ago, it only took 8 hours. The last time I went to Australia, it only took 5 hours to get to Los Angeles, and only another 14 hours to go from Los Angeles to Sydney (roughly equivalent to driving to Ohio and back). And when we got to Australia, it was different in detail, but the overall "feel" of the place was almost identical to the US. And we were not at any time out of communication with people back home.
ligneus said...
Yes I read that article, it's so sad that the lunatics have been allowed to take power. It seems like Trump was the last chance, who else would or could take on the entrenched deep state.
The Trumps of the world are part of the group that created the flatness in the first place. They are the ones knocking down the borders for commerce, destroying the unions, and placing efficiency over humanity. They thrive in the problem, and won't be part of the solution.
One Brow - I agree with the general intent of your message. I hope you would concur that your statement is meant to be general, and not strictly apply to every business person.
I would also suggest that business people work within the constraints placed upon their businesses by the government (and yes, many of them do, quite successfully, lobby for the constraints to be in their favor). The politicians impose said constraints and do so for the continuation of their own positions of power. From this I conclude that a given business person is no less likely to be part of the solution (and since they have to always adjust to the conditions and constraints of the market, they may well be more likely to be a part of the solution) than a life long politician.
Tim, this is spot on, when it comes to the economic realities we face. I think the thing about the "flatness", is that it is a mistake to think that it was caused intentionally. I think, instead, it is a direct result of the fact that long-distance communication is so cheap as to be practically free; that it is easier to fly across the country or even to another continent than to drive the length of Michigan[1]; and that containerized shipping has made transporting goods across the world competitive with trucking it across town.
I don't see how the enforced, cultural flatness follows, though.
As for the first part, you could probably ameliorate it through, gasp!, regulation. That is, you could make it illegal to provide certain goods via online retailers. You'd inconvenience the multitudes, but you'd save the productive lives of many.
For One Brow, all roads lead back to Trump. Yawn.
Ohioan@Heart,
One Brow - I agree with the general intent of your message. I hope you would concur that your statement is meant to be general, and not strictly apply to every business person.
Of course. Very few statements apply to everyone. Also, I agree wholeheartedly with your point constraints placed by the government, although we should also not dismiss the constraints placed by stockholders and the call of more short-term money as well.
K T Cat,
For One Brow, all roads lead back to Trump. Yawn.
I know you like to think of yourself as a fair person, so I hope you don't mind my pointing out that I took a statement *ligneus* made about Trump, and used it to refer to a more general group of people.
"I don't see how the enforced, cultural flatness follows, though."
Well, multiple cultures can coexist as long as they are at least partially isolated from each other by difficult travel and limited communication. But without some sort of impediment, whichever culture is more "invasive" will eventually subsume the other, kind of like the way dandelions take over your yard. And the end result is that all cultures end up more or less the same (particularly the ones that share a common language), because what's to stop this from happening?
"... and that containerized shipping has made transporting goods across the world competitive with trucking it across town."
Something like that has always been the case. For example, in late-Republic/early-Empire Rome, it was far cheaper to ship grain from Africa (Tunisia), and later from Egypt, to the city than to cart Italian grain to the city.
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